Monday, September 11, 2006

As we see the yearly politicization of September 11th for partisan gain -- especially vicious this year with the desire to change the subject from remembrances of the administration's reaction to Katrina and the up-coming midterms not looking good for the GOP -- there is something worth keeping in mind when one gets accused of having a pre-September 11th mindset and that is the actual pre-September 11th mindset of those who will accuse you of having a pre-September 11th mindset.

On September 11, 2001, Condoleezza Rice, at that time National Security Advisor, was slated to give the Rostov lecture at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced international Studies. The topic of the talk? "The threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday" What is the biggest threat we faced on September 11, 2001? According to Condoleezza Rice, it was a nuclear missile launched by north Korea or Iraq. The first and far and away most important item on the foreign policy agenda was hyper-funding that boondoggle which is the missile defense shield.

So, here was the person whose job was to understand where the threats to our national security were coming from and despite explicit warnings, did not see it coming from where it was, in fact, coming from.

"As he prepared to leave office last January, Mr. Berger met with his successor, Condoleezza Rice, and gave her a warning. According to both of them, he said that terrorism-and particularly Mr. bin Laden's brand of it-would consume far more of her time than she had ever imagined.''

When I hear about the piece of historical revisionism that ABC is considering with its hit piece written from and designed to push clear partisan interests and then I think of what could have happened if those whose job it was to keep their eyes on the ball had actually done their jobs, it just makes me want to cry all over again.